Rumor Report

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Xbox Live upgrade, new Sega titles, online Rocky, and more.

By IGN Staff

Lots of juicy rumors here for you. Of course, we always try to confirm what we hear, but sometimes we don't ever hear back from anyone, and sometimes we get a simple "no comment." Whatever the case may be, the following rumors are pretty exciting and we thought you'd like to hear about them. We meant to include a couple more, but are working on compiling more evidence. So be sure to check back in our next Rumor Report for some really BIG news. Cheers.

A Snapshot of Sega's New Lineup Next Monday, meaning, Monday, January 26, Sega of America will hold a press conference to show game journalists a slew of new Sega product for the upcoming year. As always with Sega, we're excited by the potential of the now-pure developer and publisher to deliver innovative, fresh and different kinds of games. What's in store? We're told to be on the hush-hush with a handful of them, and we don't know the rest (we simply weren't told about that handful), but after doing a minor amount of research, we've come up with some strong possibilities and some near certains.

We expect to see a game by the name of Blood Will Tell, details and screens on Samurai Jack (actually you can check our story on that here), maybe some news on the making of a Trigun game, news on Headhunter 2, and sadly, the one we know the least about is Altered Beast. We know there are others, but we can't say, so expect more come next Monday.

Battlefield 2 for PS2, Xbox IGN has learned that the success of Electronic Arts' Battlefield: 1942 has given the Redwood City, Ca.-based publisher a good idea -- to bring Battlefield to the consoles. Why not bring IGN's 2002 game of the year to the PS2 and Xbox? They're online, right? You bet they are. Our sources tell us that EA is endeavoring to bring a new console-specific game, NOT a port of Battlefield: 1942, to PlayStation 2 and Xbox as early as this fall. It's called Battlefield 2. Supposedly the game can field as many as 16 players, but the developers are still testing what works best. The company also plans to bring a more substantial single-player mode to the consoles too. We'll have more as soon as humanly possible.

Rocky Vs. The World Internal development sources from Europe have given IGN the details on the sequel to the sleeper hit Rocky. It's tentatively called Rocky Vs. The World, it's online for both PS2 and Xbox (sorry, no GameCube version), and the engine is nearly identical to the first game. The new online title features more characters, stages, and upgraded visuals. Look for this to appear on PS2 and Xbox by the end of the year.

Xbox Live 3.0 The latest update for Xbox Live is rumored to have a ton of new features that are actually quite useful. Rumored to be released around April this year, the 3.0 update should include:

Voice Mail - Send your friends 15-second voicemails any time you send a friend request or game invitation.

Title Managed Storage - Store information on the Xbox Live servers. Global storage is used to store rosters, weather patterns, and such, while per-user/per-title storage will give each gamer 32 KB of storage to store playbooks, settings, and other personal data. Benefits include not having to use memory cards to transport information.

Family Title ID - Lets users share information across up to four supported games. For example, a user-created sports team can be automatically transferred across a number of titles.

Teams - Create a team for a multiplayer game and have it - and its records - carry over each time you play a game. Each supporting game will offer its own set of rules.

Competitions - Player- or publisher-created competitions will let gamers play in automated in-game elimination tournaments. Teams and individual participants are expected to be supported.

Messaging - Players will have the ability to send and receive messages - voice or text - in any supported game.

Updated Statistics and Clan Support - The ability to create "units" of players, complete with stat-tracking. Improved statistical data for individual games.

We tried to contact Microsoft for an official statement but have not heard back from the company at time of publish.